The archived blog of the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

Oct 31, 2011

Journalists Doubt Obama Administration's Dedication to Transparency

By DAHNA BLACK

Has access to government information improved under the Obama administration? According to a recent feature in the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), science journalists feel there’s been little in the way of progress. Earlier this month, the National Press Club hosted a panel discussion, moderated by AP reporter Seth Borenstein, to explore that topic.

The panelists included:

Curtis Brainard, Columbia Journalism Review (CJR);

Joseph Davis from the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ);

Felice Freyer from the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ);

Darren Samuelsohn, Politico’s senior energy and environment reporter;

Clothilde Le Coz, Washington director for Reporters Without Borders; and

Nancy Shute, President of National Association of Science Writers (NASW).

One chair on the panel remained empty – the one reserved for a representative from the Obama administration.

In September, HHS published a new media policy, “Guidelines on the Provision of Information to the News Media,” making it one of the first agencies to publish written rules against staff members speaking to reporters without reporting to the authorities. Under the new guidelines, “employees are encouraged to speak to reporters about their work whenever possible and appropriate.” However, the guidelines also say that “[w]hen approached by a reporter, HHS employees should work with their immediate supervisor and coordinate with the appropriate public affairs office/personnel in their agency.”

According to Nancy Shute, the new guidelines make it difficult for science journalists to do their job. “What you’re missing there is the ability to cover…good solid science that was financed with our taxpayer dollars and that we as journalists are just unable to cover because of the situation.”

Gabriela Schneider, communications director at Sunlight Foundation said in a recent article that the new guidelines “subvert the role of their public affairs departments. My counterparts within government are now less likely to help reporters understand scientific data; instead, they serve as gatekeepers whose primary role seems to be to thwart the public’s right to know.”

Curtis Brainard reached out (to no avail) to the Environmental Protections Agency (EPA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) six weeks before the panel, inviting them to send a representative who could address journalists’ concerns about the new guidelines, transparency and lack of access to government information issues under the Obama administration.

“[The empty chair] says a lot about what’s going on today, and suggests that people who are unhappy with the current administration’s policies aren’t just imagining things. I think it’s an object lesson.” said SEJ’s Joseph Davis.

There was a consensus among panelists that this issue is not unique to this administration, but that realization has disappointed many journalists. “With every new administration we go back through this again, and I think a lot of us naively thought when the Obama administration came in with this big push for transparency–transparency 2.0, open access to government databases, open access to government generated science–that this would make it easier for all of us to do our jobs, and I think we quickly realized how naïve we were,” said Nancy Shute.

Despite their disappointments with the administration, the panelists made a point to discuss its successes, including the reduction of its backlog of FOIA requests from 130,000 incomplete requests in FY 2008 to 70,000 in FY2010 (see full report here).

Towards the end of the panel, it became clear that the noted success of the Obama administration with FOIA requests would not be enough to ease the frustration of journalists who have begun to doubt the administration’s dedication to transparency.

The panelist ended the presentation with a single message: journalists need to work together to overcome access to government information issues. According to Shute, it is important for journalists to keep records of their interactions (or lack thereof) with the different agencies, so they can be better equipped to bring these issues to the public’s attention, and “make [their] case to the administration.”